Category: Tactics

It’s been a while, but I’m back. I may not have blogged in a few weeks, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been playing FM. I’ve been firing through the save at the same rate as before, but finding it difficult to remember to screenshot, and document the save at the certain popular periods for an update. When you last heard from me at the end of season 3, we’d just won the Scottish Premiership in our first season in the league. What an achievement.

When you last heard from me on the tactic I was playing in the ‘Ton save, we’d just won our first Scottish Premiership title, at the first time of asking no less. The tactic I won the title with wasn’t the one I chose to tell you all about. After the title win, I took the decision to totally revamp the way I wanted the team to line up on the pitch. That decision led to my beautiful asymmetric tactic. What followed that was two consecutive 2nd placed finishes in the Scottish Premiership. In one way, this was perfect, it allowed us to establish our place in the league after the surprise win in our first season back in the big time. On the other hand, this is Football Manager. Those 2nd placed finishes hurt, I wanted the top spot again. What we went on to do was special, and if you want to read about a tactic that won two consecutive domestic trebles, you’d better keep reading!

If you’re here to read about RBLeipzig’s real life tactics, or any proper attempt at recreating the way they’re playing on FM, you’re in the wrong place. There’s plenty of brilliant articles out there analysing what Naby, Werner, Forsberg, Sabitzer and Poulsen are doing offensively and defensively to ensure that they’re probably the most exciting team in world football right now. I’d definitely suggest you have a Google search and read some of them, as any similarity between my FM tactic and the way RBL are playing in the non-FM world is purely accidental.

I’ve been talking about it for a while, and it’s finally here! It’s my second post for FM17 on the tactics I’ve been using in my save. It was initially adopted by RBL during season 3, but I’ve also been using it to great effect with RBS since I took over there too. Of course, both teams playing the same way will only help us to develop players who can easily slot into both of the clubs.

I grew up watching football at a time when 4-4-2 was the standard across Scottish and English football. Beckham and Giggs on the flanks, Keane and Scholes centrally and Yorke and Cole up top are my most vivid memories of the formation. Even now, on terraces across Scottish football you’ll still hear some rage when teams aren’t playing “two up top”.

You can catch me waxing lyrical on the OneMoreGame podcast, on FMSlack or on Twitter about my 4-4-2 on FM18. I felt it was about time I got some words down in blog form too.

The start to competitive football in season two hasn’t been positive. We’ve struggled for consistency and really struggled to create meaningful goalscoring chances. At the time of starting to write this post, at the end of October 2019 in-game, we’re languishing in the bottom half of the league on nine points from eight matches. Continue reading “Sempre Vitória | Season Two | 4-1-2-3 Tactic”→